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Topic: Special Snowflake Stories (Read 6050452 times)

I can sympathise with wanting to sing first soprano, although I don't condone what she did at all.

I was usually first soprano, but occasionally ended up second. Unfortunately I'm not great at picking out middle notes, so I generally found myself singing the top part simply because I couldn't "hear" the second - fortunately the choir I belonged to never noticed that, because with the complicated songs they gave us the conductor was more concerned with people making up the parts they didn't know than with a soprano singing the wrong part correctly.

DP decided she needed a milk shake late Saturday night, so I drove down to Steak and Shake. Love, love, love this place - service is always top notch, food is hot and fresh, never had a single problem and we go there regularly since we've been living here. I order, and notice the girl taking my order is having to get me to repeat myself a lot, and taking a long time to do my order, but I figure it's just that she's multi-tasking since the dining room was pretty full. I pull around, and see what's really going on.

The woman in the white BMW ahead of me is screaming, flailing her arm out of the window and cursing a blue streak. She gets her bag of food, and pulls up about two feet (so she's not in line with the window, but close) and puts her car in park, lays on the horn for a good twenty seconds, and then throws her car in reverse and pulls back to the window without looking (glad I'd waited to pull up!). She thrusts the bag back at the window, starts screaming something about onion rings, cursing again, and waving the bag at the girl at the window. The girl at the window asks her for her receipt (apparently the SS thought she'd ordered one more serving of onion rings than she had). They get it figured out, the SS all but throws her card at the girl at the window, and then is asked to pull forward to the little 'parking' area ahead so they can get her additional order ready. She inches up a few feet, then a few more, then a few more, the car jerking to a stop suddenly every time. She finally gets to the end of the building, puts it in park (not where they asked her to go, but at least out of the main drive through path) and sits there for no more than a minute. I pull up, get an apology for the delay, and pay for my food. I hadn't even gotten my card back when the SS starts honking her horn again, for another 20-30 seconds, then the drivers door opens, the woman leans out and, um, soils the parking lot. She slammed her door, threw it in drive, and took off, squealing her tires. I figured she'd be back around in a seconds, but realized why she wasn't when I finished my order - there were *three* police cars parked on the other side of the building. :-)

I was in the Wind Symphony while in undergrad school. There really wasn't any auditioning to get in - they pretty much took anyone who wanted to play. I played flute, which in most groups like ours, means that there are 10 gazillion flute players. So you would have to audition for chair position. Usually, they took half the group and had them play first flute and half play second flute. They would only "seat" the number 1 and number 2 flutists for each part based on skill level. Everyone else sat alphabetically down the line.

My senior year, I'm a 1st flute after 3 years of playing 2nd. But not quite good enough to be sat in the 1st two positions in this section (was previously sat in the 2nd flute position). My last name began with C, so I'm sitting in the "3rd" chair. The girl in the 2nd chair and I became friends pretty quickly. The girl in the 1st chair was an arrogant SS.

Christmas concert came and went, and 1st chair girl is not happy. She didn't get all of the solos. Some went to her, some to 2nd chair girl. And then 1st and 2nd chairs in 2nd flute section got theirs.

Spring concert time comes and 1st chair girl puts forth a demand to our director (who was one of the coolest, most fun directors I've ever had.) She gets ALL of the flute solos or she walks. She did this 2 days before the concert, probably thinking that this late in the game, director will cave.

Nope, director basically says it's been fun having you but don't let the door hit you on the way out. He then comes to rehearsal and tells me that guess what, you're now 2nd chair. He let former 2nd chair girl do the 1st flute solos because I couldn't learn them well enough in time, but she and I now did all the parts where it just went down to 2 flutes. I scrambled and learned all 3 of them in the next couple of days. Concert comes, former 1st chair girl doesn't show, so we did the concert and I did OK. She never did come back, probably out of embarassment.

This could go here or in the "Drive you crazy" thread, but I'm still irritated so I'm going with SS.

I sing in a community chorus of 80 people with 8 voice sections: 1st and 2nd sopranos, 1st and 2nd altos, etc. Tonight was our first concert and somehow every single 1st soprano but me called in sick. During warm ups our director announced that I would be miked since I would be singing my parts alone. One of the 2nd sopranos offered to step in and help but the director reassured her that I knew my parts and would be fine.

Except when it came to my first descant line that I was really looking forward to singing, she started singing it along with me, off key and off rhythm. The second time several people hushed her and afterwards I saw the director talking to her. I don't know if she really wanted to help or just wanted part of the spotlight, but she made things worse, not better.

Ah yes, the second soprano with aspirations for loftier places. I was in the second soprano group when I sang and there was always a lot of girls convinced that they should have have been or could have been firsts. Some were still good in the second in terms of holding their notes in opposition to the firsts and just complained verbally, but others "had trouble" and would stray onto the firsts' part leaving the rest of us to pick up their slack. Just got them scolded, not moved (the ones that actually could hit those notes were actually good enough to understand that there is skill and value in singing second) so I'm not sure why they'd persist in trying.

As someone who's done a bit of choral work...why would they want to do that? I honestly don't get it...if you're a 2nd soprano, why would you want to sing 1st?

These people considered 1st soprano to be the better part. They saw it as evidence of being a better singer, i.e. they believed that being able to hit high notes means that you are good at singing. In one of my choral groups, the solos always went to girls from the 1st sopranos unless it was firmly an alto solo, though I would argue that the girls in that group at the time were simply better singers than the 2nd sopranos who were auditioning. Another reason is that one of them thought the first soprano part was more feminine and pretty.

If anyone in my college choir was that snowflakey (not likely), my director would have stopped everyone once and played the right part. If he heard it again, he'd have people he knew were doing that sing the part by themselves in front of everyone. Chances are the people goofing around musically would accidentally sing the wrong part in nervousness. We already have altos who switch between Alto I and Sop. II (he told me and two other girls to do that); we don't need any more confusion.

We had the "Special Soprano" problem in my church choir, except the people who sang 1st soprano were very SS. I only sang 1st on occasion and so wasn't welcomed fully into the core group, but it was seriously a clique unto itself. There were three soprano groups and I was typically part of the 2nd unless they needed very loud high notes (that I could reach). The 1st sopranos were together constantly and were always having other people fetch them water and hot tea and were always going on about their voices and the strain/difficulty of their parts. I wanted to tell them to loosen up because we weren't Celtic Woman, but I kept it to myself.

We bought our car from a Nissan dealership two years ago. For the past year, several area Nissan dealerships have been spamming me, claiming that they want to buy my car back, they're just so desperate for it and they'll pay top dollar, etc. Yeah, I'm sure they're that desperate for a late-model Sentra. I know that they're just trying to get me on the lot to try and sell me a new car.

The other day, DH got a call from one of the dealerships asking us to come in and talk about selling the car. He said no and hung up. So what did they do? Sent me an email confirming our "appointment". Bull hockey.

The kicker was a couple days later, when we got an email from a salesman saying we'd missed our "appointment" and we needed to call him to reschedule. Noooo, thank you.

I love Nissan but this dealership carp is really starting to sour me on them. I also had a service advisor tell me I should just buy a new car, because I was having trouble with my gas cap. Really.

Logged

"From a procrastination standpoint, today has been wildly successful."

The first chair/soprano musical issues get so much worse when parents are involved. So many parents have their emotions/ego wrapped up in their child's performance and status. And more often than not, they don't have a realistic view of their child's skills.

One case that comes to mind was in high school, when I was in band, a new girl joined the clarinet section and when she "auditioned" for her spot* she was placed in the third section. Her mother hit. the. roof. Didn't director know that New Girl was first chair at her old school? (No, New Girl never mentioned.) Didn't director know that New Girl was better than any student in our band? (Nope.) Didn't director know that New Girl's Mother was once first chair soloist violinist in the Such and Such Philharmonic? (No, we doubt very much that was the case. But if it was, New Girl didn't inherit her mother's talent.) New Girl's Mother threatened to go to the principal, the school board, the media, the state's music education association and the UN. (OK, maybe not that last one.) Director told her to do what she needed to do. New Girl, who was greatly embarrassed by her mother's antics, stayed in the third section.

A few weeks later, the choir held its auditions to place the students in first and second sections, and the whole thing started again when New Girl was place in second soprano. Only this time, New Girl's Mother claimed to have once been a lead performer in a major metropolitan opera company.

I wondered how she had time for that with her extensive violin career.

(*She would have been accepted just by joining, but the director wanted to grade her skills so he knew where to seat her.)

MIL and I encountered a SS the other day. I still don't know what her deal was.

We were leaving a parking lot. It was pretty busy and there was traffic coming from both directions of the lot and feeding into the main exit from the lot to the street. Cars were taking turns going into the main exit and MIL stopped to let a woman coming in from the other direction go ahead of her.

The woman responded with a one-finger salute.

What?

The whole way home, we were trying to think of a reason and just couldn't come up with one.

I can't decide if this person was a SS or within her rights as a customer The day before Thanksgiving I ran into a small specialty supermarket. They had all their checkout lines open and all but one were being used for ringing up big orders. I had 2 items so got in line in the single express checkout line behind a women with 3 or 4 items. Once she was rung up, she then got her wallet out, and took out a gift card, (prepaid Mastercard type thing) asked the cashier if she should use it like a credit card. They tried it that way, it wouldn't go through, so she then tried it as a debit twice using 2 different pins. There's now 3 people behind me.

Customer says I have cash, but let me try this other card, so gets her wallet back out, pulls out a different gift card, and goes through the same process again. During this time the customer does acknowledge she is holding me up and says to me she gets a lot of these cards from her clients but always has a hard time using them but since she has some time on her lunch hour she thought she would give them a go. And reaches for a third card in her wallet. At this point the floor manager comes over and says she'll take customer over to customer service to see if they can complete her order there since the express line now has 7 or 8 people in line. After holding up the express line for 10 minutes, Customer says, oh I don't have time for that, here is cash to pay for my transaction.

Though I thought the floor manager and cashier were going to brain her for a minute, they said ok and them gave each of us in line piece of chocolate to thank us for our patience.

I think she was a SS for picking a busy time, holding up the express lane and not saying after a couple of attempts that she'd try the card another time.

Logged

If wisdom’s ways you wisely seek,Five things observe with care,To whom you speak,Of whom you speak,And how, and when, and where.Caroline Lake Ingalls

This could go here or in the "Drive you crazy" thread, but I'm still irritated so I'm going with SS.

I sing in a community chorus of 80 people with 8 voice sections: 1st and 2nd sopranos, 1st and 2nd altos, etc. Tonight was our first concert and somehow every single 1st soprano but me called in sick. During warm ups our director announced that I would be miked since I would be singing my parts alone. One of the 2nd sopranos offered to step in and help but the director reassured her that I knew my parts and would be fine.

Except when it came to my first descant line that I was really looking forward to singing, she started singing it along with me, off key and off rhythm. The second time several people hushed her and afterwards I saw the director talking to her. I don't know if she really wanted to help or just wanted part of the spotlight, but she made things worse, not better.

If the director told her not to, it's probably for a good reason. So definitely snowflakey.

This sort of reminds me of a director I once had who would do "fun" things like transpose the soprano line lower for the altos and then make the sopranos sing the alto line even though it was written right at the bottom of the alto range. As you guessed, said director was an alto and was bitter about sopranos always getting the melody.

Can I just say, that her arrangements were not even close to what she thought they were. But of course she thought she was the next John Williams. (She was getting her degree in Music Composition.)

She also felt that all sopranos only sang high because they didn't practice enough to sing properly. She would say, "Well this will be motivation for you to REALLY practice." I've been singing in choirs since was was 10. I had private lessons in high school/college. By that point (I was mid-20s) I was pretty dang sure I'm made that way. Don't get me wrong, I love to sing the harmony because it makes being a soprano more interesting but I still can't dip below the treble clef any easier than an alto can belt a high F.

My mom had a SS neighbor until about 6 months ago. Sarah had the left side of the duplex and my mom owns the right side of the duplex. Overall Sarah was mostly a nice neighbor with some odd minor family drama occasionally. She also, apparently, had a major "retail therapy" addiction. And would often bemoan the fact that she wanted to do work on her side of the duplex but only if Mom did the same on her side and would pay 3/4 of the bill. er, how about no?About 3 years ago, things started getting rough financially (some of the retail therapy stuff was repossed when I was visiting) and Sarah needed to put her house on the market. So one day while Mom was at work, Sarah planted some bushes in front of Mom's living room window and moved some of Mom's garden stones around. *for the record, this is NOT a neighborhood with a HOA. And Mom usually uses potted plants for most of the area in front of the window.*Mom came home and hit the roof. First, she never liked bushes planted next to the front of a house. Second, these were planted RIGHT up against the brick. Third, they were anything that Mom really liked. And Fourth, right...get out of my yard!

I get the whole curb appeal, but Mom's space is fine. Sarah just wanted matching front plants apparently. Oh, and she was less than thrilled when Mom tore out the bushes. (Mom may have offered them back to her, but not sure)

We have a new SS co-worker this year. Things that are expected of all of us do not apply to him. He has a billion excuses for not acting like a member of a team. He is better than you and wants to make sure you know it! He is certainly free from the rules that fetter lesser humanity. Examples:

College week on campus, we all wear college shirts. Cool co-worker is wearing a Duke shirt.SS: (eyeballing) Huh. Did you go to Duke?CCW: Nope, just a fan of Coach K.SS: Yeah, well, practically my whole FAMILY went to Duke. (rolls eyes)

This conversation was between SS and Other Teacher (I was standing right there).OT: Our department is meeting for 30 minutes after school next Tuesday to go over common planning.SS: (pained sigh) Ugh, I have a media event that night. I need to nap, no can do.

The best one? SS shows up late to a parent conference with a bowl of cereal and thermos of milk in hand, pours the milk, and proceeds to crunch and slurp away for the duration. After parents left, Awesome Co-worker tries to educate SS.AC: I can't believe you did that. Very unprofessional.SS: Whaaat?AC: Eating in a conference? Seriously?SS: I don't know what to tell you - I only have a 20-minute window for breakfast.

Encountered a SS (a group, actually...) A whole circle's worth, blocking most of the walking aisle, instead of standing in the center of the aisle (where benches and venders usually are, but in this case, there was enough room for all dozen of them to stand and gab without blocking anyone."

As my mom and I walked up to them, there was a space big enough for two people to walk side by side, and only if they walked *literally* up against the wall, where upon they'd almost immediately hit a window of the next store, and there's usually enough room for 5 people to walk abreast). When we reached them, I said, "excuse me, could you please move? You're blocking the aisle."

After we'd walked a good 10 feet, one of the SS's yelled to us "you could have just walked by us, like everyone else."

Between them, and people racing us to get to the register first makes me glad I don't have much more X-Mas shopping left.